Optical busses operate at high bus speeds, unmatched by even the most advanced electronic components. The pairing of such electrical devices with optical devices can lead to latency and conflicts. As optical busses evolve to operate at data rates beyond the capability of current characterization equipment, there is a need to develop test and evaluation methods that allow accurate characterization while decoupling the characterization from electronic test equipment and methods that will induced their own lag and latency to the measurements.
The biggest challenge with employing an all optical bus is that the clock speed of the optical bus. For example the real on chip digital clock rates today are 2-4 GHz. As technology evolves, electronic clock rates may reach a staggering 10-12 GHz. This is still a fraction of the 40-120 GHz clock rates that an all optical bus should be able to obtain. This fractional variation in clock rate induces a lag in the write/read cycle if the information is taken directly from the electronic component to the optical bus.